


i think there's a flaw in my code

by Duck_Life



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Androids, Depersonalization, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Ice Cream, Identity Issues, Objectification, Trauma, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23044669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Soji tries to deal with the truth of her identity. Deanna Troi helps.
Relationships: Deanna Troi & Soji Asha
Comments: 15
Kudos: 90
Collections: Star Trek Fics





	i think there's a flaw in my code

Everything about Will and Deanna’s home reminds Soji of an old-fashioned cabin, all wood paneling and earth tones and warm rugs. It reminds her of the camping trip she took with Dahj and her father, only… only that never happened. It was fake. Her (fake, synthetic, fake) hands clutch the edges of the granite countertop in the bathroom as she stares at her (fake, copy) reflection in the mirror. 

Her eyes look human. Her skin looks… she has pores. Humans have pores. She has fingerprints, just like humans. She has dreams. She has nightmares. She has fears… Soji presses her trembling lips together into a thin line and watches as her reflection does the same. 

_ You’re not real _ , Narek had said.  _ You never were _ . 

And yet he had lain with her, had touched her, kissed her, fucked her. What does that make her, then? A doll? Some kind of wind-up toy, to be used and discarded… The kind of thing you might read about in a dirty holonovel. A sexbot. 

Before she realizes what she’s doing, Soji scrambles to the toilet and vomits, feeling her (fake) ribs ache as she heaves. When she’s done, she stays craned over the toilet bowl for a moment, breathing hard, and then she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. 

She wonders if Kestra would be as impressed by bile and stomach acid as she was by mucus. 

_ You’re not real. _

“Deanna,” she calls out, pushing herself up to sit on the edge of the bathtub. Her knees don’t want to cooperate with her (malfunction). “Deanna!”

She hears the woman’s footsteps hurry toward the bathroom and come to a stop outside the door. “Soji? It’s me,” Deanna says. “Do you want me to come in?” 

Soji coughs. “Yes. Please.” 

The door creaks when it opens; the hinges must need oil. Or maybe Will and Deanna should just switch over the automatic doors. Everything is replaceable. The obsolete can be upgraded. “Everything okay?” Deanna says, dark eyes sweeping over the scene. 

Soji tucks her hands (fake) around her elbows, like she can hold herself together. “If I’m mechanical… then why did I just throw up?” 

Deanna glances at the toilet and then back at Soji, looking sad. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I can never hold down Will’s cooking either.” She reaches into the cabinet for a washcloth and wets it in the sink, coming to kneel in front of Soji. The cloth is soft and the water is warm. Deanna wipes her mouth and chin the way she must have done for Kestra so many times. 

“I just… don’t understand,” Soji admits. 

Deanna flushes the toilet and pulls the lid down so she can sit on top of it, her knees knocking against Soji’s. “Your body mimics a human’s,” she says. “Soji, you were designed to—”

“Copy,” Soji finishes dully. “I was created to mimic and copy and  _ act _ human without actually being… real.” 

Deanna regards her, and Soji wonders how many (programmed, fake) emotions she’s picking up from her. Confusion, anguish, worthlessness? All ones and zeros in her computer mind. “You know who you remind me of?” Deanna says finally. 

“Yeah,” Soji says. “Data.” 

“No, not Data. You remind me of  _ me _ ,” Deanna says. “When I first started at Starfleet Academy. There weren’t many other Betazoids on campus… and  _ no one _ was half-and-half like me. Nearly everyone I knew was human and raised on Earth. I was so… lost. And lonely. And I wasn’t used to people being so… protective and secretive with their emotions. It was so hard for me to tell what emotions were ‘acceptable’ to acknowledge and which I was just supposed to ignore.” 

“Really?” It’s hard to imagine Deanna being lost or unsure about anything. 

“Oh, yes,” Deanna says. “I was basically an outcast. I had to learn all these new social rules and behaviors… and of course no one thinks to write them  _ down _ . Learning starship maneuvers and psychological diagnoses was easy, in retrospect. Learning how to talk to people— and talk to them like a human rather than an empath? That was hard.”

Soji looks down at her (synthetic) fingernails. There’s dirt underneath the nail on the index finger of her right hand from the garden. So humanly imperfect. “What did you do?” she asks Deanna. 

“I started copying what I saw,” Deanna says. “I watched holos, I listened to the people around me. I would make up these ‘scripts’ in my head to match and mimic conversations. I realized if I could anticipate what other people might say to me, it was easier to say something that sounded, well, ‘normal’ in response.” 

The rug beneath Deanna’s feet is patchy and bare in some spots. Maybe she’ll toss it out and replicate a new one. “You copied,” Soji says. 

“Yes,” Deanna says. “And you know what? It made it easier for me to open up and connect with people. And it didn’t make me any less of a… of a  _ person _ .”

“I don’t always feel like a person,” Soji admits, her voice dropping to a whisper. As if it’s some secret. As if Deanna and Will and everybody else doesn’t already know who—  _ what _ — she is. 

“I know,” Deanna says. “But that doesn’t stop you from being one.” Deanna is so nice and reasonable, and Soji keeps waiting for her to reveal her true intentions. For her kind smile to drop, for her to call Soji a thing, an  _ it _ , and flood this tiny bathroom with radiation. 

And would she even die? Or would she just deactivate? A broken machine, no longer functioning efficiently. Deanna seems so sincere, and it almost makes it harder to listen to her. 

Picard is impulsive, arrogant, single-minded. In a fucked-up way, it’s almost easier to take him at face value. Nothing about him seems subtle or soft. He’s not going out of his way to make her like him. Which almost makes it possible to trust him.

Almost. 

And Picard trusts these strangers, these soft, kind people in their soft, kind house. So… so. “Tell me more about Data,” Soji says, struggling to bring herself to meet Deanna’s dark eyes. 

The woman smiles. “You haven’t heard it all from Kestra?” 

“Kestra told me all the good things,” Soji says. “Sherlock Holmes… ballroom dancing. But I’m… if I’m really an android… I need to know the bad stuff, too.” 

Deanna nods slowly, folding her hands over one knee. “What do you want to know?” 

Start at the end. “He’s dead,” Soji says. “But he was a machine, so how can he be dead?” She thinks about her “father,” the faceless nothing-man with the orchids, the man who kept her laid out on a table, Geppetto’s workbench. She wonders if the voice of her father is Data’s. 

“Data gave his life to save Picard,” Deanna says, sounding like a commander now rather than a gardener. “Picard was on a Romulan ship that was going to explode. We had no way of transporting him back. Data leapt through open space to access the ship, climb aboard and send Picard back to the  _ Enterprise _ using his emergency beacon transponder. And Data was destroyed in the explosion.” 

“Why?”

“His body was made of—”

“No, I mean… why did Data die for Picard?” Soji says. “I mean, didn’t he. Didn’t he have some sort of… of self-preservation protocols? He wasn’t programmed to sacrifice himself.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Deanna agrees. “But Data was always striving to be more than the sum of his programming. And he loved the captain—”

“He loved,” Soji whispers. “How? He was a machine. How could he…  _ love _ ? A _thing_ can’t love. A computer can’t love.”

“You’re wondering if you can,” Deanna says simply. 

Soji shuts her eyes. “Everybody that I thought I loved was either lying to me or not real.” 

“What about your sister?”

“She’s gone,” Soji says dully.

“She was real, though,” Deanna says. “And the love you felt for her— the love  _ she _ felt for  _ you _ — was real.” The other woman studies her. Soji remembers Picard telling her that Deanna used to be a ship’s counselor. Trained to pick up emotional distress and discomfort. 

Trained to pick those things up in  _ organics _ , of course. Real people. Not freaks. Not robots. 

“I lost a sister,” Deanna says. Surprised, Soji tilts her head to one side. “I was just a baby when she died. Didn’t even know about her until I was grown up, and my mother… told me. We, ah. We named Kestra after her.” 

“Kestra lost her brother,” Soji says slowly, thinking about the way the girl’s bright eyes get sad when she talks about Thad. 

Deanna hesitates a little before saying, “Jean-Luc also lost a brother.” And then— “Data too.”

“Data had a brother,” Soji repeats— not exactly a question, more an expression of disbelief. 

“The man who created Data also built two other androids— Data’s brothers. But they… they’re both gone now.” Deanna’s pulse jumps. Her eyes skate away from Soji. She’s lying— or, no, not lying. Omitting. There’s something she doesn’t want to say. 

It doesn’t make much a difference to Soji. She can’t trust anyone anyway, whether or not they’re telling the truth. 

“Data died before the ban on synths,” Soji says.

“That’s right.”

“What would have happened to him if he’d still been alive?” 

Deanna sighs. “I don’t know, Soji. Starfleet might have ordered him to be deactivated— of course, we would have fought like hell to protect him.”

“We?”

“The crew of the  _ Enterprise _ ,” Deanna says. “Our family.”

“I don’t understand,” Soji says. “Why did you all care so much about… about an android?” She has heard people speak with reverence for their possessions, their technology, their machines. Is this the same? 

“He was one of us,” Deanna says. “He played poker with the crew, he served with us on the bridge, he performed in our concerts and plays. He risked his life when we did.”

“He was useful.”

“He was our friend,” Deanna corrects gently. “I don’t know, Soji, can you tell me in words why you love your sister? You just do. Data was… you know, he used to practice sneezing? He found such wonder and fascination in things that humans take for granted. We all got to see ourselves from a whole different perspective.”

“What do you see when you look at me?” 

Deanna leans back and truly studies her, like she’s trying to capture a mental picture of this moment. “I see a young woman with no reason to trust me or my husband,” she says. “Someone who believes she might be better off sprinting into the woods and never looking back. And I see her choosing to stay here. I see her being kind to my daughter. And… and I am sorry, but I see Data in you. I do.” 

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Soji says, realizing suddenly that she’s crying. Saline tears trail down her cheeks. A fabricated response to a feeling that is more circuitry than chemistry. 

Deanna passes her a wad of toilet paper so she can wipe her eyes. She says, “Maybe. But I’m sorry anyway,” and Soji dries her (fake) tears. "Listen," Deanna says. "You said you'd never eaten a meal that didn't come from a replicator. I'm guessing that includes dessert?" Soji nods. "Then... do you think you could do me the honor of letting me make you your very first chocolate sundae?" She holds her hand out to Soji. 

Soji thinks about what it might feel like to taste non-replicated chocolate for the first time. The way her (fake) tastebuds will analyze the chemical composition and send the information through tubes and wires to be stored in her positronic brain. 

Or maybe it will just taste good. 

She takes Deanna's hand. 


End file.
